Baltimore Teen Killed in Shooting Remembered as Outstanding Youth

Baltimore police are investigating the April 16 shooting death of a teenager remembered as an outstanding student, youth leader and up-and-coming baseball star.

Police said 17-year-old Michael Mayfield was found shot in the head inside a vehicle in the 2300 block of Lyndhurst Avenue in northwest Baltimore’s Windsor Hills neighborhood, according to WBAL Radio. Police have not named a suspect or made any arrests, according to the radio station, but said Mayfield’s shooter was a Black man who was wearing a blue sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes.

Mayfield’s uncle, Matthew Drake, told WBAL Radio that Mayfield was visiting with family at their home and left around 6 p.m., when a man shot the youth four times before fleeing the scene in a waiting car.

The Edmondson High School senior was set to graduate in the coming weeks, and took part in a wide variety of activities. In addition to pitching for the school’s baseball team, according to The Baltimore Sun Mayfield was a member of the school’s Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, played baritone horn, and served as a youth ambassador and peer mediator.

“Of all the people it could have happened to, why—why him?” Diamond Simpson, a woman who worked with Mayfield on a project at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, told the Sun. “He was a positive role model. He was a real figure you could look up to and say, ‘Someone I know is trying to make it and doing positive things in life.’”